The Nature of Blame

What is the nature of blame? Recently, I took my prelim exam in the Philosophy of Mind and one of the questions I answered was on the reactive attitudes and their effect on how we perceive what the nature of blame is. I found the question quite intriguing, and, the purpose of this post will be to pose some questions as to what role the reactive attitudes have in our understanding of blame and if they alone constitute blame, or, if blame is something different. I was introduced to blame (academically) when I sat down to read George Sher’s book ‘In Praise of Blame’ (2006-OUP) a few years back. Since then, there has not been much literature on the subject (only 2 pieces come to mind here, Scanlon 2008 and Wallace 2011), hopefully, in the near future, I’ll be able to add to it. But, for the time being, I’ll sketch some of my ideas in this brief post. I won’t be offering a robust position at the moment, however, I will suggest how we ought to think about blame given our social nature.

We blame all the time. We blame at work, we blame at home, we blame ourselves, all we do is blame! When something goes wrong, we work endlessly to find someone to blame for our misfortunes or our bad experience. But what is blame?

Is it an attempt uncover the truth about actions we find harmful to ourselves or others? Is it connected with some innate search for justice? Also, if someone is blameworthy by meeting some metaphysical underlying conditions of moral responsibility does that warrant the blame we ascribe?

These questions are quite intriguing but I’d like to focus on a different one; can we blame without having emotions? Though they often seem to be accompanying our active blame directed at others I do not think emotions are necessary for blame to be present. For example, if I am wronged by a friend must I feel resentment or any other emotion to say “I don’t think it was appropriate to do X”? Why think that we should? Many philosophers (Angela Smith and RJ Wallace) claim that blame is primarily connected to these emotions. I guess I’m not convinced. I blame lots of people without feeling many emotions. I have blamed my dog for knocking over the bowl. I have blamed historical figures for what they have done. I also blame myself for lots of failed undertakings and miscues. I blame editors for not doing their job properly, but I don’t seem to be angry in most of these cases. Maybe these cases are not of the moral variety and these authors are suggesting a connection between emotions and blame in only those sorts of cases? But there seems to be counter-examples there as well. For instance, a friend has not called me in a while, I blame him for that yet I do not feel any ill-will because of it. I’d like to think that friends have a moral obligation to stay in touch, when they fail to meet this moral obligation I could be justified in blaming them. If I do, according to Smith and Wallace, then by definition I will have an accompanying emotion with it. But, I don’t. There are times when I do, in the most egregious of cases, but, for many, I don’t feel any negative emotions. I can recognize a miscue or wrong-doing without having a negative emotion accompanying my analysis. If this is right then emotions are not directly connected to blame and we might have reason to argue against the necessary connection that seems to be central to both and Angela Smith and R. Jay Wallace (another that has a similar view is Susan Wolf ). I’d like to hear what others think about blame.

Have you read J. L. Austin’s “A Plea for Excuses”? It’s been awhile, but I recall that it was very interesting. Basically, by looking at the sorts of things we blame for, the sorts of instances when we accept excuses and so on, he examines how we carry out moral reasoning and discourse in ordinary language (as opposed to the forced jargon often employed by professional philosophers). I think it would be very relevant to your interests and might help you towards that “robust theory” you say you don’t have yet.

Now, this is completely a very personal take on the concept of blame. Many will not agree, however it is to a certain degree how I see it.

As human beings I think we tend to try and find logical solutions or reasoning’s to a given situation, be they significant or not. To reason or seek a logical solution we need not feel strong emotions per se. We need only to want to find some kind of reasoning for it’s occurrence. To make it fit neatly in a box or thought form that we are comfortable with, as it were.

I believe it is more a need to give it meaning or purpose rather than attribute it to a random or coincidental moment in time. Or so it seems to me…….

When I think of Blame the first thought that comes to mind is redirection e.g. get the focus off me. A little more pondering brings to mind that blame assigns something – “I blame xyz for abc”. In the process of blaming there is a rationale or a reason or conclusion/explanation generated. Regarding emotions – perhaps that’s what the assignation of blame gives a person – a way to deal with emotional discomfort be it guilt, outrage, sorrow, loss, etc. Even the good stuff like joy and passion. Just a few things that came to me – thanks for the think!

Could you say a bit more regarding the conclusion that you say is generated from the process of blaming? Is it an expectation that gets generated, say, for instance, the conclusion that the one being blamed should ask for forgiveness or show regret, or, is it more of a conclusion based on a causal explanation such as “yes, he did it and he’s to blame. If the latter then what sort of process leads one to that conclusion? The totality of facts then the blame ensues? Blame is such an interesting topic to think about since we all do it so often, often subtly, without even noticing that we’re doing it.

Sorry for taking so long to respond – I didn’t get the notice of reply. More simply stated – nature abhors a vaccum. Blame to me is like assigning a reason and perhaps that is a better word than conclusion. As to process – something happens and being human we wish to assign some kind of explaination to why or how – fill up the vaccum of not knowing – so we “blame”. I think emotionally that give us some kind of relief because “now we know”. Perhaps erroneously or naively, etc. but we ‘know” – we have a conclusion, reason for xyz experience. The T is crossed, the I is dotted. We can move forward…..

Interesting topic.
I think one of the reasons why one would say that blame need not necessarily be connected with emotion is the following. When one say “I blame X for doing Y”, one is saying: “X ought not to do Y”. I guess in saying the latter, no involvement of emotion is necessary.
I tend think that one can use the term ‘blame’ in this maner as a technical term in philosophy. For example, it seems to me that this is the way we use the term ‘epistemic blame’. However, it seems to that it is not so clear whether it is the case when we use the word in ordinary contexts. In ordinary contexts, when P says “I blame X for doing Y”, P seems to be expressing her/his dislike of the action Y which X did. Whether or not P felt the emotiion of dislike, the words are emotion-words. I think P caannot say that “I blame X for doing Y but I like X’s action Y”. This seems to suggest that blaming the action Y and liking Y are inconsistent to each other. I understand that this is not sufficient to argue that emotioin is necessarily connected to blame; but just a thought.

I wonder if the blame we often cite as “epistemic blame” is still blame. Blame seems to point toward being at fault, so to speak. So I’d want to say yes. ANy time we think someone is at fault blame CAN BE appropriate. But, even in cases where there is dislike, many times it seems as though there is no emotion. Take blaming a friend who may have drank too much and decided to yell at you before falling asleep. I would blame him for doing what he did but I may not be angry, in fact, I may laugh at his antics right after blaming him for doing it. While I agree that many times emotion is present I am not convinced it is a necessary condition for blame (you eluded to this in your last sentence).

I am interested in what you said about the “emotion of dislike”. Is there an “emotion” always connected with dislike? Are there cases when we dislike something but it is accompanied by positive emotions? Maybe. How about cases in which we dislike doing something but decide to do it anyway (cases where we feel obliged to do X but we dislike doing X). I wonder if the same can be said in cases of blame. We might blame our children for doing X because we don’t want THEM doing it but at the same time we ourselves might enjoy X. This case seems to be at least one example when we like something but blame someone for doing it. I assume the reverse could hold as well.

I think there is a difference. I disapprove with the policies of my department regarding funding students for conferences but I do not blame them, or any one person for the policies. Or, how about disagreement and disapproving? Any difference? We disagree all of the time and we do not blame, right? Disapproving is tough though, there is room for disapproving without blame, or, at least I think that there is.

I may disapprove of the way that someone parents their children but I may not blame them for anything. Blame seems to be pointed toward specific actions whereas disapproval seems more like a general state. I’m not sure though, I’ll have to think a bit more on that. Great question.

I think it is worth noting when we talk about blame, that there is an issue of cause and effect. A computer can spot the effect of a cause, such as a virus attacking its software, and will notify you. But it does not blame the virus to do such a thing. In that way, emotions do determine blame. But there are all sorts of connotations and denotations of blame that we can get into as well, that debunk this rather shoddy argument. Blame may sink in deeper than simply emotions, but it is very clear that a computer cannot blame something for happening to it or something else.

“The king’s to blame!” Laertes says of King Claudius about the death of Hamlet’s mother. But in what sense is the blame simply sociological, or simply a cause? The blame is there to lead Hamlet to action, and kill his uncle. Justice and revenge seem to be blame’s cousins, in that way. But does Claudius die in the name of justice? Or is it simply a blame-game? Realistically, he did not intentionally kill Gertrude. But he is to blame. I suppose if we were Platonic Vulcans (a la Star Trek), perfectly, ideally logical creatures, there would be no blame. But then we would be something non-human. I guess in that way blame makes us human, as well as a lot of other attributes.

Thanks for the response, Elwin. My apologies for not responding earlier.

To your first example.

Blame goes beyond causal responsibility. The virus is causally responsible for its affect on the computer but not morally responsible. Blame is connected to the latter.

To your second example.

I’m not sure what you mean by “the blame is there to lead Hamlet to action”. It could be that Justice is doing the work and not blame.

Also, if he did not intentionally kill Gertrude then he is not to blame, well, he could be but we’d have to know the details of the case. For instance, if he should have known that she would die as a result of his actions then he could be. But, again, causal responsibility does not necessitate blame ( a concept connected more to moral responsibility).

Your claim that “blame makes us human” has me thinking. Does it? If blame is simply recognizing who is at fault (as you have suggested) then it seems that animals can blame when they try and attack (this might be a stretch). Again, this point is thought provoking… Thanks.

I think blame is always an emotional defensive response to perceived pain. The more personal the injury is perceived to be, the stronger the emotions attached to establishing blame are. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson says the chemistry in our brain determines how we will react to varying emotional stimuli and has identified 6 different ’emotional styles’ and that emotions are crucial to how our minds work. His book was reviewed in Scientific American this Julyhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mind-reviews-the-emotional-life-of

I did have a question though.You said, “The more personal the injury is perceived to be, the stronger the emotions attached to establishing blame are.”

How about blaming when we were not “personally injured”. For instance, we might blame a co-worker for cheating on their spouse. We may never have met the spouse and it may not rile up any emotions but we might blame them for cheating if they have committed themselves to a closed marriage.

On the other hand, maybe its empathy for the one who was cheated on that serves as the linchpin for the blame we might ascribe to the cheater. It’s tough to tell. Either way, it seems that we could tell a story where emotions were not present.

I blame you for writing about an interesting topic in which I put off reading my existential philosophy homework to expound on your thoughts. lol. Blame. Either blame no more happens because the human race is so narcissistic that in essence the blame starts with thought of self, or blame no more occurs because I live by a philosophy in which if I caused it I admit it and amend it, or if making you the victor and me the fallen you can walk steadier with a swag of some sort, well TjFg, honestly being right is the wrong and most harrowing business to align myself. Personally, while I’m busy blaming, and building my “Confederacy of the Dunces” by Otoole, who wrote this book at 19 and then committed suicide (makes a gentle point), I really would rather be doing my homework or spreading glitter magic everywhere.

Good one, Jessica. That post got a laugh out of me.Then, it made me think. Unfortunately, many do not hold your philosophy and need to be called out in order to make improvements. See, I’m blaming right now (those who don’t take accountability as you do) and I’m not angry or feeling an emotion at all. In fact, I’m still smiling over the blame you levied toward me for writing the post.

Hi. The point I was attempting to bring to light is: Psychologist’s are considering not putting Narcissistic personality disorder in the new DSM-V, because now the narcissistic personality is the majority of people out of 100. It’s now so prevalent that psychologists call it the norm. Here is where I leap upon the shores of blame, Narcissistic personalities don’t have an emotional base for their rxns to a seemingly emotional cue. As you know, the machination of humanity bursts into a steady sprint and at the end meets its motherboard. Think Iphone, or the Wii (the two i’s make a We), the drug culture (I want what a want now), institutions once supported by the whole to preserve the individual’s right to be, just not in a public setting due to mental health (severe) problems. The Government is the biggest (I) machine that just runs on its faults, it forgot its truths. Our democratic bullshit philosophy is so distorted that other countries still want what the US propgandizes say we as individals in this great nation freedoms, unfathonable. The problem is this country is run by a collective whole who together don’t have emotions. why do you think there is a Republican, Democratic party? If I make sense bravo, and if I don’t i read the play No Exit last night for the 15th time.

I see. Well, I guess I’m not so concerned with narcissists not getting emotional cues. I don’t think emotional cues are necessary to achieve a general understanding of anything. They could serve to guide us, but they need not.

Your criticism of the government that doesn’t run on emotion is interesting, however, consider the flip side. A government that runs on emotion. In my view, emotions often serve to guide us away from correct action. Consider the bigot politician who is disgusted by interracial or same sex marriage . That disgust is driving his policy initiative. He might not be able to harness that emotion, however, with reasoning skills and solid self reflection he could teach himself not to feel that emotion.

Emotions are primitive, or so I would argue. As a species that has the ability to self reflect and consider alternatives, I see emotion serving as an obstacle in many instances. So, when someone argues that it is necessary for concepts like praise and blame to get off the ground I am skeptical. Moral sentimentalists extend emotions necessary connection to moral judgments in general. This is a move that should be resisted as well.

I do not think emotions are necessary for us to understand others. I think they sometimes serve to HELP us understand others and I also think they often derail us from understanding others. I think autistic individuals have trouble understanding others for a variety of reasons. If all they lacked was emotional response or internal ’emotional’ connection to others then maybe they could serve be a counterexample to the claim that emotions are not necessary for one person to understand other people, generally speaking. My understanding of autism suggests there is more going on (cognitively speaking) than simply lack of empathy that provide obstacles to for people with autism to have deep interpersonal relationships.

Yes! I love philosophy! 🙂
Blame? I have really made my observation. Blame goes along with emotions, most times and for most people but most importantly, blame triggers inactivity.
Blame is often an excuse, not a reason. I discovered that blame, whether or not it has negative emotions, often bring an end to the subject or atleast some resistance.
For example, a friend of mine has not called me for ages, by blaming, I move ahead with other things and forget about calling the friend, or, I call the friend and we start up another series of blame argument and pity party that may end up making us go our sepearate ways, with grudges.
Well, this could just be an extreme to buttress my point.
Rather than blame, I recommend taking personal responsibility.
If somebody has done something that affects me or my group negatively, I will quickly take responsibility by taking remedial actions and ensuring that everybody involved learns from the incident. Afterwards, rather than blame, we can teach or discipline the one who’s action or inaction caused the problems. Ignorance and inexperience or outright indiscipline are often the causes of errors. Blame looks away from those issues and focuses on the defaulter.
In the middle of an operation of any sort, the focus should be on the success of the operation and the development of the operation team. Blame is often a distraction. My recommendation always is; take personal responsibility!
I am sincerely excited to be sharing these thoughts. I can make a new post out of this! 🙂

I am also a firm believer of personal responsibility. It might be easier to take such possibility if one has been a recipient of their fair share of blaming when they have wronged someone in their earlier years. Hmmm. Maybe blame can be a pragmatic tool to teach regardless of its metaphysical underpinnings?

I am going to play the antagonist and say that emotions are relevant in blaming. I would also like to assert they become stronger when the disorder or change which causes blame is closer to home; with the self being proximal and the earth being distal. However, if someone were well connected to a city or country – like a president, or a spiritual leader – I think this distance between the self and the country could be less of a factor and more emotions would be felt about the country as a whole.

Why do I think we blame? Because we have perceived disorder and wish to create order. This disorder can be anything from missing an important personal date to the terrorist attacks on the twin towers.

Who do we blame? Ourselves, usually, or if that is not satisfactory we go on a witch hunt for the alleged perpetrators.

How does disorder make us feel? Humans do not like change or disorder, especially when they did not initiate it. If something in our lives changes we may feel lost, confused, frustrated etc. A good example is when I take the speaker cable out of my fathers computer and plug it into mine and then do not put it back into his when I am finished listening to music. He comes along the next day expecting to play music and there is no sound. He becomes frustrated and goes searching for the guilty party – me – to teach me a lesson on moving other peoples stuff. The same feeling of frustration could be felt also if he remembers removing the speaker cable the day before and simply forgetting to replace it. In this case he would punish himself with a little silent pep talk.

Another example could be a robbery on my college campus. Last week I got an email describing a robbery on my college campus in the middle of the day. The man used a handgun to rob everything in a students car. When I read this, I felt emotions. I felt angry, sad, frightened and revengeful. I wanted somebody to bring those robbers to justice. This time the disorder was a little bit further away from my home. The robber did not come to my house and rob me so I do not feel the same strong emotions, but it still affects me. I could be getting robbed tomorrow in broad daylight. I feel some emotions when blaming these robbers because it is still personal.

A final example would be when I heard a news story about rioting in England a few months ago. There was disorder everywhere. People were smashing store fronts, flipping cars, burning everything and fighting with police. Yet, I did not really care. I was too far removed from the disorder to actually feel threatened. It was almost like watching a fictional action movie. But, I would still like to argue that I felt emotions when I found something I could relate to – rebellion. Everyone has a bit of anarchy in them. Everyone is just a little bit fed up with authority. Seeing those people fight back was relevant enough to make me want them to bring justice to the authority they were fighting against.

A book I read by the Dalai Lama titled: The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World. He and a Western psychologist went on to describe all the troubles in the world and attempted to discover the reason for them and ultimately offer some kind of a solution. What they came up with was the idea that people hate because they do not see the individual person or group of people as human. The brain is very good as finding differences between one group of people and another. It had to do this as a survival mechanism in order to identify friend from foe. Now, however we still use it unnecessarily and end up labeling different cultures and ethnicity as bad or non human. The solution to this problem was to stop looking for differences between people, and start looking for similarities. If we can relate to one another we see a bit of ourselves in everyone and therefore should find it hard to hate that person or group of people.

What I am trying to get at here is that the only reason someone would feel less emotions when blaming is that they are not seeing the situation personally. I find it hard to believe that there is ever a situation where there are no emotions involved with blaming because at the very least we should be thinking in the back of our mind – treat others at you would like to be treated yourself.

Threat to the self and extensions of the self warrant negative emotions. The solution to a threat is justice. We achieve justice through the identification of the source of the threat and then blaming them. Therefore, if there is nobody to blame there is no threat to the self and extensions of the self and there is no emotion.

A quick last thought. If a lawyer was involved in a case where he apparently felt no emotions at all for the disorder that was being investigated because he personally was not threatened, would he be able to win that case? If he did win would he have to “prostitute” his emotions for the money he was being paid since they were not voluntary.

I agree that emotions are often “relevant” when discussing the nature of blame. I also think that more often than not emotions are present when we blame others, or ourselves, or our dogs for that matter. My claim is that they are not present in every instance of blaming, and, if that is right, then emotions are not a necessary component of blame. I’d like to try and motivate this claim by responding to two points that you made, if time permits I’ll post again to touch on your other points.

You made two consecutive claims that I would like to address in order (1) “What I am trying to get at here is that the only reason someone would feel less emotions when blaming is that they are not seeing the situation personally”.

Sure, this is likely the case. But, someone might be the kind of person that does this more often than not (keep in mind, I only need to show 1 case where emotions are not present but blame is for the truth of my conclusion to hold).

So, if someone doesn’t take something personal, and taking something personal always includes emotions. Then many times when we blame (without taking things personally) emotions would not be present, right? I blame Bernie Madoff for stealing billions of dollars, however I do not have an emotion attached to this. Likely, for the reasons you suggested (because I didn’t take what he did personally). Regardless, I blame him for it.

Next you said,(2); “I find it hard to believe that there is ever a situation where there are no emotions involved with blaming because at the very least we should be thinking in the back of our mind – treat others at you would like to be treated yourself”.

I think when speaking to (1) I offered a situation where blame is present but no emotions. To see something as wrong is not to NECESSARILY feel any negative emotions connected to it. Just because they often accompany ascriptions of blame does not mean that they are always there.

Now, you mention treating others like you would want to be treated. Why does this mean emotions must be present to make such a judgment?

You said (3) “Threat to the self and extensions of the self warrant negative emotions”.

I MIGHT be inclined to agree here, however, it’s a different discussion (related for sure) to analyze when emotions are warranted. I’ve been concerned about whether they MUST be present for blame to be present and I haven’t been convinced they they MUST be there, not yet anyway.

You said (4) “Therefore, if there is nobody to blame there is no threat to the self and extensions of the self and there is no emotion.”

How would you talk about blaming someone for something that happened in the past? The person is not around anymore, let’s say that no one is around anymore. I would still blame say my mom for smacking be for no good reason regardless of whether there were others around or not, whether she was alive or not (my mom didn’t abuse me, just a random example 🙂 ).

I think blame is a bit more than a simple threat-to-self acknowledgement. Often, there is no threat to self at all yet we’ll blame. A friend that knocks over a bowl of cereal onto the rug because he was laughing uncontrollably at breakfast.That friend might be blamed for staining the rug but he doesn’t seem to be a threat in any way.

Lastly, you mentioned “disorder” throughout. I’m not sure how you’re using it. As a disruption of some sort? If the world is causally determined then everything that happens is happening “orderly” so to speak. Yet, we would likely blame if the world was determined. Also, calculated actions do not seem to fall under any definition of disorder I am familiar with. But, we blame those that might not consider some important point before deciding to act even when the act was done in an orderly manner and didn’t result in “disorder”. For instance, a friend who didn’t call us to watch a movie with a larger group of friends, or something like that.

Thanks again for your sharing your thoughts. I hope this response addressed some of your concerns satisfactorily.

Thank you for your reply Justin. Your arguments really helped me to redefine my argument and create a much more concise and direct one.

I would like to argue that when inquiring into the nature of blame we are in fact inquiring into the nature of decision making and weather emotions are necessary in to make decisions. I will explain.

I think to see this question better it would be important to define blame. I found this on Wikipedia: Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise.

If we take this definition to be true then we can infer that when we blame someone we are holding them responsible for a negative action through either engaging in an investigation, through acknowledging the facts (or fiction) of another investigation, or lastly through face value judgment; race, sex, hair color etc.

One thing that all three of these “methods of blame” have in common is that one has to make an informed or uninformed decision. Are they guilty or are they innocent?

When performing an investigation there are two methods of making decisions about the truth.

1) Logical decision-making
When we use logic to make decisions, we seek to exclude emotions, using only rational methods, and perhaps even mathematical tools. The foundation of such decisions is the principle of utility, whereby the value of each option is assessed by assigning criteria (often weighted).

2) Emotional decision-making
There is a whole range of decision-making that uses emotion, depending on the degree of logic that is included in the process.
A totally emotional decision is typically very fast. This is because it takes time (at least 0.1 seconds) for the rational cortex to get going. This is the reactive (and largely subconscious) decision-making that you encounter in heated arguments or when faced with immediate danger.
Common emotional decisions may use some logic, but the main driving force is emotion, which either overrides logic or uses a pseudo-logic to support emotional choices (this is extremely common).
Another common use of emotion in decision is to start with logic and then use emotion in the final choice.

It is obvious then that when we use emotional decision making we are always using emotion. However when we are using logical decision making it would appear that it is not necessary in include emotions.

The only thing that I am not 100% convinced on is weather decision making at its very nature involves some kind of emotion when the scale is tipped and one choice is preferred over the other – even when the method was logical. What happens at that precise moment? Here is an answer I found that I would agree with:
The point of decision
Always emotional decision?
So at the point of decision, emotions are very important for choosing. In fact even with what we believe are logical decisions, the very point of choice is arguably always based on emotion.
We talk about decisions that feel or seem right. When logical decisions are wrong, we will often feel that this is so. Emotions are perhaps signals from the subconscious that tell us a lot about what we really choose.

What do you think about the point of decision? Do you agree with my reduction of the nature of blame into the nature of decision making?

Oh good! You just picked it out precisely there. Blame, when handled properly, is a good tool to teach with. People can be made to take responsibility of whatever mess they create. We just should not allow blame to deprive us from moving ahead. Your reference to metaphysical underpinings made me smile. Welldone. 🙂

The issue may be in the word itself. It carries a negative connotation. Substitute the phrase “assign responsibility” and suddenly it’s not so loaded. Of course the dog is responsible for knocking over its food bowl and there need not be any emotion, negative or otherwise, attached to it. Perhaps the real issue lies in the etymology of the word itself. The noun form dates to the early 13th century, from the old French word blasme “blame, reproach; condemnation,” a back formation from blasmer. The verb form dates even earlier, to the 12th century, “find fault with;” to “lay blame on,” from Old French blasmer (12c., Mod.Fr. blâmer) to rebuke, reprimand, condemn, criticize.

Justin, @desertrose, @Raiana Golden, Yes, It is a tendency to reason out when mistakes happen. This is a different way of looking at situations: If mistakes are embraced as ‘ours’ and steps are taken to improve the situation objectively as a team, then what blossoms out of it is amazing! Thanks! Love you! Jyo

Hope I’m not repeating. I would suggest emotions are essential in blame, and everything else, for the following reasons.
Let’s propose that reality is logical and rational. All the same we humans are finite. I must now excurse for a bit to set the background.
Silly example. I leave home angry, punch an innocent guy. He goes flying and is thus not hit by a bus. Did I do good or bad? Stop me at hitting him and I did bad -> wait to see the bus miss him and I did good.
This ‘uncertainty’ of long term outcomes gets massively complex if we look at any scenario in full. What will X action lead to in the future. Will it be a necessary part of a “sum of good”, or a vital part of a “sum of bad”? So many things fed into and fork out from any ‘nexus of causality’ that it’s impossible to know.
Much as Heidegger states we cannot judge our lives until death – until our life is complete – similarly we cannot judge “sum good” or “sum bad” until the end of time. For all we know we are the caterpillar not the butterfly, and 10million years from now a new species on a new planet will make sense of the universe as we never did and transcend to ‘godhood’ or whatever.
Coming back a little – within this ‘uncertainty paradigm’ every decision can only be finitely informed – we can look at only so many options, so many possible futures or outcomes. Then we must pick.
As creatures of pure logic, we would never act. We would spend our whole lives extending the calculation in order to reach the ‘right’ choice, which we would see required us to wait till the end of the universe in order to have all the data!
In order to act at all we must be irrational, illogical, and this is where ’emotions’ come in. We must act on our gut, our feelings at some point to break the trap of absolute uncertainty.
So to blame. Someone can only be ‘to blame’ if we could know beyond doubt that the universe was going to end badly, and this persons action was a vital part of that! Otherwise their bad act today might be a vital part of some good result in twenty years time – we cannot know. Our ‘Blame’ is an emotional ‘trip-switch’ which enables us to stop calculating and arbitrarily say ‘the chain of possibility ends here’. The quicker a person is to blame, the less they understand the true nature of our uncertain world, the unknowability of future causations.
In short, the quicker someone is to blame, the more narrow minded they are.
So, emotion is an essential ingredient of ‘irrationality’ which enables us to act in every sense, including in the act of blame.

First, you’re assuming that one needs perfect knowledge of the future in order to be logical or rational but this need not be the case. There are multiple accounts of rationality that one could adopt. You have offered only one account here, and it’s and it seems to rely on some sort of infallible epistemic position which is highly controversial.The literature on this topic is quite expansive so it would take me quite some time and fairly off topic to explain the details. I’m looking to understand the nature of blame (hence the title) not if one is ever justified in blaming. I’m also interested in the latter, however, this post is focused on blame’s nature. I’ll get to writing a post on justifying blame in due time.

You say “The quicker a person is to blame, the less they understand the true nature of our uncertain world, the unknowability of future causations”

Blame is backward looking (usually), so, it is possible for one to have the knowledge one needs to justly ascribe blame without having knowledge of the truth of future propositions. Maybe they are quick to blame because they bare this knowledge. Further, many philosophers have argued for agents being blameworthy for morally permissible acts. One need not even have done something impermissible for them to be blamed. You seem to be assuming that an impermissible act must have occurred.

Since your talk of emotions is grounded in irrationality it’s tough to debate the point since we must first get clear on irrational vs. rational behavior. Your view on rationality is contentious and I would have to hear more about why your view is better than opposing views which tell a much more plausible story.

Your bus example isn’t sitting well with me either. Who in the example are you referring to with regards to blame? Are you referring to us blaming the guy who pushed someone for the possible negative outcomes of the events that follow as a result? Again, the events that follow would be looked at as well but when trying to figure out the nature of blame I think it would be best to look at each action in detail.Is the guy blameworthy for pushing the guy? It likely depends on the guys intentions, whether he had control of his actions, what sort of knowledge he has of the situation and if he arrived at his belief that he ought to push the guy in an epistemically responsible way, etc. None of these considerations appeal directly to future states of affairs.

Hi Justin
I don’t assume one needs perfect knowledge – we can’t have it and we seem to manage. What I contest is that for there to be a ‘true’ use of Blame would require perfect knowledge. Our ‘definition’ of blame occludes the fact that for the definition to hold true would require perfect knowledge.
You say this post looks at the nature of blame, not if anyone is justified in blaming. To understand the nature of Blame one must examine how it is used and functions. Otherwise you’re trying to understand the nature of a screwdriver without ever using it as a screwdriver. Words must be understood as they are ‘ready-to-hand’, not ‘present-to-hand’.
Blame DOES HAVE negative connotations, an ‘impermissible act’ does have to have occurred – Blame is used in language to connote placing responsibility for ‘negative’ actions. If your using it in some specialist sense then all debate becomes pointless, because it needs to be understood as it is used in the world, in its ‘language game’ not in the ‘lab’. Otherwise this is like taking one jigsaw piece and trying to work out it’s nature without ever looking at the rest of the puzzle.
Or are you conflating blame and responsibility? But it’s precisely in the distinction between blame and responsibility that we find the answer to your original question. Responsibility objectively ascribes a ‘locus of action’, blame ascribes responsibility AND negative judgement.
Blame is often but not exclusively backward looking. However, one DOES need knowledge of the future for a true use of ‘Blame’ as we presently define it, as it is presently used in language and culture.
I could Blame someone for killing another – never knowing they had killed Hitler – I would Blame when I should praise, so my Blame is mistaken. I could praise them for saving Hitler’s life, unaware of what Hitler would go on to do. So, Blame is necessarily NOT LOGICAL OR RATIONAL in a strict sense. If we were honest we would accept that we cannot know if an action will eventually lead to good or bad – then we would abandon Blame and only have a ‘judgement neutral’ ‘responsibility’. Blame comes from our cultural paradigm of dominance and power. What Blame consists of over and above ascriptions of responsibility is the irrational action of power over another. It is irrational because a true understanding of the nature of being would see Blame as increasing or prolonging harm for both parties.
The reason my position is controversial is because it accepts that we can never know (human) outcomes and so can’t really judge (it’s sort of Buddhist). This is totally against entrenched masculine scientistic approaches which insist we can know – but these are epistemes of dominance and power, not reality and knowledge.
Finally you say to understand blame we need to look at actions in detail – at intentions, self-control, knowledge held, epistemic responsibleness. Sounds close to needing ‘perfect knowledge’ to me. We are never FULLY aware of ALL our motives, let alone being able to show those to others; ‘reasonableness’ is a cultural judgement embedded in a complex flux of discursive practices and ideologies… basically as I stated, it’s too complex to know – and so we cannot know, and so we cannot judge ‘purely logically’ or rationally – but emotionally.